Bad to Worse

My father in law passed away suddenly this past week. Although he wasn't in good health for a long time, nobody expected him to pass imminently and the circumstances of his death were traumatic to my wife and mother in law, being so far away -- they had spoken with him by phone in the morning and he had seemed confused, so they asked my brother in law to check on him, but my brother in law didn't hurry, and it was too late when he got there. I got the news just after arriving at work in the morning, and everyone scrambled to pack the family and dogs and fly to Minnesota that night to put his affairs in order. 

Since then, I have been in limbo. My wife hasn't been good about sharing with me in general in recent months, spurning even innocuous conversation-starter questions with "why do you care?" or "it's none of your business," and she has similarly been refusing to discuss anything to do with her father's arrangements. I don't know anything about where the funeral will be held, who the funeral director is, what is planned, etc., and even asking the date so that I could plan around it prompted a furious argument, asserting that I had done nothing but think of myself since his death, when in fact I had been missing work to watch our son almost continuously all week, had driven with them to track down my alcoholic brother in law at a bar, and had been instrumental in getting everyone there in the first place. She declared that it was entirely inappropriate for me to ask or know who her father's estate attorney was. The bereavement leave policy at my work is not that generous, and I feel pressure to get back to California for work, but my wife, who originally said she might stay there a month to help her mom, is now saying she wants to stay almost two months, putting our son in daycare there and forcing me to either violate my firm policies about remote work or go back to California by myself without my kids, while she stays as long as she wants without a return ticket.

I understand that she is in shock and grieving with her mother, but they were already a clique, and now I am even more on the outside. On the drive home from the airport my wife declared, with her mother listening, that she wanted us to sell both our house and the grandparents house and buy a house where her mother could live under the same roof with us, and it was all I could do to insist she at least be in a separate ADU on the property even though I already hate how she will do anything for her mother at the expense of our relationship, and wanted to tell her to pound sand. She accuses me of being insensitive and not caring about her father's passing, but the honest truth is that he isolated himself watching Fox News with headphones in his room with the door closed all the time and never really bothered to interact with me or get to know me much. So I'm more upset that I feel like I'm losing my immediate family than about my father in law's continued absence. I get that that's a little selfish, but it's the direct result of my wife keeping me on the outside of the arrangements (and everything else in her life) and not treating me like her partner. I am holding my breath for the end of the line, and just trying to keep my kids as close as I can.